Based on a true story, The Jew's Beech centres on two brutal murders in rural Westphalia – the first of a local forester and the second of a Jewish moneylender near a beech tree – and the impact these events have on the life of Friedrich Mergel, a local herdsman with a turbulent family history.

A prototype of the murder mystery and a thoughtful examination of village society, this intriguing novella contains hints of the Gothic and the uncanny – ominous thunderstorms, mysterious disappearances, eerie doppelgängers and grisly discoveries in the depths of the forest – as well as a famously ambiguous climax.